Best Wingman??

^ couldn't agree more.


What pissed me of in WC1 is when your wingman gets damaged a lot and than they start constantly sending you their "help me" message, and that makes you unable to see target info in the middle of the fight.
 
What pissed me of in WC1 is when your wingman gets damaged a lot and than they start constantly sending you their "help me" message, and that makes you unable to see target info in the middle of the fight.

You could tell them to keep radio silence.

In fact, I told Spirit to keep radio silence on my very first WC mission, because I thought the Kilrathi could detect us if she used the Radio. What would be kind of cool, anyway.
 
^ couldn't agree more.


What pissed me of in WC1 is when your wingman gets damaged a lot and than they start constantly sending you their "help me" message, and that makes you unable to see target info in the middle of the fight.

You can turn the Video messages off.
I think it's Alt+V.
 
By far the best wingman I had would have to be Warlock from Prophecy. He was amazingly good at flying. His only down side was that if he was shot to the point of death or ejection, he alway's died.

My least favorite was Stilleto, oh my god did she piss the hell out of me in flight, I can't tell you how many times I tried in vein to kill her.
 
My least favorite was Stilleto, oh my god did she piss the hell out of me in flight, I can't tell you how many times I tried in vein to kill her.

Yes, i only like her outside the cockpit, in flight, sometimes, when i was bored, i used to whack her out of the sky :p
 
Resurrecting thread almost 13 years later. I've been playing Wing Commander 3 again lately and it feels like all things being equal Maniac is the best wingman. Also, if you check the kill score board as the game progresses, Maniac always has the most kills out of all the other wingmen. This would indicate all-around he would be the best wingman to pick in WC3, and usually his performance shows.

However, I have noticed something as well. In the storyline as you talk to other wingmen before missions who happen to be lurking around on deck, if a particular wingman is fired up about something in the storyline and you pick 'the good path' storyline as the response to that wingman's dialog (the one that stays on their 'good side'), and then pick that same wingman on your mission after you go through the briefing, then that particular wingman goes off in the mission. I tried this several times and noticed it work, and particularly 1 mission with Flint, where if you give her the correct response in the storyline she says you would like you to meet her father. Pick her for the next mission after the briefing. When we flew the mission She fried like 8 Kilrathi before i even had a chance to really start doing damage to each one.
 
Do they really fly that different? In WC3 to 5, I always had the impression that it came down to mostly tweaking some parameters like how long they stay on target and how often the use the afterburner, not utterly different flying styles like Seether's AI in WC4. And in WC1 and 2, I fail to see much difference at all.

By the way, if this "performance boost"-behavior you mention does indeed exist (and is not just some bias or random observation), it would actually give the game and its underdeveloped morale-system more depth.
 
I also experienced that in WC3 spaceace but in general Hobbs and Maniac are the best especially for the later difficult missions, Vagabond is one of my favorites in both WC3 and 4 but in 4 I also felt Panther, always liked her style and response and her in-game voice/speech, guess you know why I chose Panther as my username ! :)
 
Do they really fly that different? In WC3 to 5, I always had the impression that it came down to mostly tweaking some parameters like how long they stay on target and how often the use the afterburner, not utterly different flying styles like Seether's AI in WC4. And in WC1 and 2, I fail to see much difference at all.

By the way, if this "performance boost"-behavior you mention does indeed exist (and is not just some bias or random observation), it would actually give the game and its underdeveloped morale-system more depth.

Yeah, I suspect there's some confirmation bias happening here. The game does have a morale system and it does affect the pilots. It doesn't give them a specific boost after a specific conversation.

This is how it works:
Screen Shot 2020-07-25 at 3.23.32 PM.png Screen Shot 2020-07-25 at 3.22.47 PM.png Screen Shot 2020-07-25 at 3.19.37 PM.png Screen Shot 2020-07-25 at 3.19.54 PM.png Screen Shot 2020-07-25 at 3.20.21 PM.png Screen Shot 2020-07-25 at 3.20.41 PM.png
 
Long ago, I also learned not to trust guides, even official ones. Plenty of them are written on preliminary information, aka pre-release.
Same with game manuals, an example I always remember is Theme Park World, which had a last-minute change before release that removed strikes altogether. That obviously allowed you to be very bad to your employees, since they never quit and still do their job, even without a sensible wage.
Manual and Guide never got that info and talked at length on how to manage your workers.

Does the WC Morale System indeed affect anyone's performance? Do we have the code to verify or the confirmation by an ex-dev?

As far as I know, we can only see that the game does indeed track morale in the save game but its effects are unclear.
 
I remember even Cobra and Flint begin very good, aggressive on later levels killing cap ships, so it's hard to say even Flash seems very good on some missions....what about skill level, does it change when you play for example on ACE ?
 
Long ago, I also learned not to trust guides, even official ones. Plenty of them are written on preliminary information, aka pre-release.
Same with game manuals, an example I always remember is Theme Park World, which had a last-minute change before release that removed strikes altogether. That obviously allowed you to be very bad to your employees, since they never quit and still do their job, even without a sensible wage.
Manual and Guide never got that info and talked at length on how to manage your workers.

Does the WC Morale System indeed affect anyone's performance? Do we have the code to verify or the confirmation by an ex-dev?

As far as I know, we can only see that the game does indeed track morale in the save game but its effects are unclear.

There are of course many examples, including in Wing Commander, where the games changed after some doc went to print, but I don't believe issues with the morale system as described have ever popped up. It's also worth noting here that the guide that comes from came out in 1995 several months after the game, so it wouldn't have been quite as much at the mercy of deadlines as the documentation that came with the game.
 
Best wingman I had was in Privateer 2! The monolith transport chews through everything.

I am not happy saying that.
I hear you there -- Everyone up to and including Liston Sativa were utterly useless. Although the Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries conversation is in Discord, I wish that you could recruit pilots to your organization pool and buy/ customize better ships for them to fly. I am also willing to see a commensurate increase in difficulty in order to facilitate this.
 
I remember even Cobra and Flint begin very good, aggressive on later levels killing cap ships, so it's hard to say even Flash seems very good on some missions....what about skill level, does it change when you play for example on ACE ?
I think the games AI, for both the Kilrathi and your wingmen, gets better as you increase the difficulty. A couple of years ago I played on Insanity and found my wingmen to be much more effective. Cobra was a beast during the Blackmane missions! I liked this from an role-playing perspective. I still ended up on top of the killboard, but did not have 5 times more kills then the runner-up.

Not sure about how, or if, the morale game mechanic improved your wingman's performance. Also not sure if certain wingman perform better on certain types of missions; like Vagabond being better on escort duty because he is kind of a "protector" character, while Maniac is best for search-and-destroy etc.
 
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